Leaving this world in an age of lies and cruelty, my last message is simple: don’t give up on truth

• Carlos Hernández de Miguel was a Spanish journalist and writer. He died on 3 February 2026

Dear reader, for the first time since I became a journalist, I have to tell you I wish you weren’t reading what I’ve written. Because if you’re reading this, it means I’m no longer in this world – or any other. I’ve died. Shit, it’s hard to write this, but that’s the way it is. I’ve died, and I don’t want to leave without saying goodbye and sharing a few final thoughts.

I’ve been a very fortunate person. I was fortunate to have been born in a European country that, although still under the yoke of Franco’s regime, very soon afterwards began to progress economically, socially and politically. Luck, and it was only luck, made my destiny infinitely easier than that of hundreds of millions of children who are born in regions of the world ravaged by hunger, poverty and war.

Jeff Bezos gives yet another powerful person an uncritical profile. The point of this one: if we’d listened to the king, there would be no climate crisis – even if some of his ideas are strangely trippy

We find ourselves at an interesting moment in the streaming wars; one where Amazon’s programming policy has apparently shifted to simply giving a massive platform to authority. Last week saw the release of the Melania Trump film (a grating vanity project it paid $75m for) and this week it’s our turn, with the platform releasing the King Charles documentary Finding Harmony: A King’s Vision.

Why Jeff Bezos would want to curry favour with the most powerful people on the planet by paying to air uncritical profiles of them is anyone’s guess. Either way, as a film, Finding Harmony is intensely frustrating to watch. It is ostensibly a relatively important climate crisis documentary, undone by its own innate sense of chippy entitlement. Perhaps a better title would have been King Charles: Needless to Say I Had the Last Laugh.

I have been called the LeBron James of spreadsheets, but I try not to take myself too seriously

Growing up in Waterford, south-east Ireland, I was always good at maths. I first used Excel at university in Cork while studying maths and physics. We used a software programme called Mathematica but it was expensive, so at home I used Excel as a workaround to do the same tasks, using it to generate, say, a list of prime or Fibonacci numbers.

After that, I worked at a consultancy company in London and started using it more conventionally. I soon became the go-to person for people who had random questions about the software, such as how to use it to figure out how many trucks are needed to transport a certain amount of packages.

The actor Wagner Moura and writer-director Kleber Mendonça Filho explain how the Brazilian thriller mirrors their experiences of political corruption and why they are compelled to speak out

Unusually for a political period drama that is not in the English language, runs nearly three hours and peppers its authentic portrayal of a military dictatorship with sight gags and gory shootouts, The Secret Agent has transpired to be quite the awards magnet. Best picture and best actor, for its star Wagner Moura (who recently won a Golden Globe), are two of the four categories in which it will compete at next month’s Oscars.

The nominations haven’t yet been announced when I meet Moura in a London hotel room, but it is unlikely they will have turned the head of this seasoned 49-year-old. He has years of experience: he headlined the Elite Squad thrillers, played Pablo Escobar in the streaming hit Narcos, and joined Parker Posey as husband-and-wife assassins in the TV version of Mr & Mrs Smith. He exudes relaxed, matinee idol charisma, as well as the same air of decency and humility as Armando, his character in The Secret Agent. A widowed academic hiding out in a refugees’ safe house in Recife at the height of the dictatorship in 1977, Armando is plotting to flee Brazil on a fake passport. To do so, he will need to outrun the hitmen hired to kill him by a vengeful industrialist.

From pirates and skateboarders in Hastings to legends and locks in Devizes, from dolphins in Scarborough to the ‘artists’ town’ of Kirkcudbright, readers put forward their favourite places

Culture secretary Lisa Nandy has launched a search for the UK’s first “town of culture”, similar to the city of culture programme, which honoured Bradford last year. After the Guardian’s writers nominated theirs – including Ramsgate in Kent, Falmouth in Cornwall, Abergavenny in Monmouthshire and Portobello in Edinburgh – we asked readers which UK towns they would put forward.

There is a look of despair in Starmer’s eyes – and a feeling in the room that the endgame has begun

It’s beginning to feel terminal. Not that there hasn’t been talk of Labour MPs wanting to remove Keir Starmer before. Just that this time there’s the sense of a tipping point being reached. No more second chances. No praying for a miracle that will never come in the May elections. A quantum shift of collective despair.

You can’t escape the irony. Starmer has always prided himself on being Mr Rules. It’s how he got elected. He might be a bit dull and lack charisma, but you can count on him to be reliable. To play by the rules. And now he has been undone by having given the prime Washington job to a man who was the epitome of Mr No Rules. And he had thought he had been so clever by acting out of character to make Peter Mandelson the US ambassador. Many in his cabinet had congratulated him, as had many Tories. A sleazy diplomat for a sleazy president. A match made in heaven.

Amid warnings McSweeney’s survival would leave his position ‘untenable’, PM apologises to Epstein’s victims for appointing Mandelson as US ambassador

Downing Street has defied calls to remove Keir Starmer’s most senior aide, insisting Morgan McSweeney retains the prime minister’s confidence, as frustration grows over a wait for documents on Peter Mandelson, which some fear could last for weeks.

Amid warnings from Labour backbenchers that McSweeney’s survival would leave Starmer’s position “untenable”, Starmer apologised to victims of Jeffrey Epstein for appointing Mandelson, a close friend of the convicted child sex offender, as US ambassador.

While labels list dozens of possible risks only four are supported by evidence, say researchers

Almost all side-effects listed for statins are not caused by the drugs, according to the world’s most comprehensive review of evidence.

Other than the well-known risks around muscle pain and diabetes, only four of 66 other statin side-effects listed on labels – liver test changes, minor liver abnormalities, urine changes and tissue swelling – are supported by evidence. And the risks are very small, according to the systematic review and meta-analysis published in the Lancet.

Half-term trial will limit ride access passes for those with additional needs and offer calmer spaces to people who find crowds difficult

People with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), anxiety and autism will be prevented from using fast-lane disability queueing passes at Alton Towers during a trial over the February half-term holidays.

Merlin Entertainments, which runs the theme park in Staffordshire, provides a “ride access pass” to visitors who have difficulty queueing due to a disability or medical condition.

Iran and the US are set to hold high-stakes negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear programme, but a dispute over the agenda suggests progress will be hard won

• Analysis: Iran is betting Trump does not have a plan for regime change

• US and Iran talks brought back from the brink after White House relents on move to Oman

Ahead of the talks in Muscat, Iran’s foreign minister Seyed Araghchi took to X on Friday morning and said that ‘Iran enters diplomacy with open eyes and a steady memory of the past year.”

He went on to add: “We engage in good faith and stand firm on our rights. Commitments need to be honored. Equal standing, mutual respect and mutual interest are not rhetoric—they are a must and the pillars of a durable agreement.”